Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity [Hardcover]

This book examines how urban adolescents attending a non-mainstream learning centre in the UK use language and other semiotic practices to enact identities in their day-to-day lives. Combining variationist sociolinguistics and ethnographically-informed interactional sociolinguistics, this detailed and highly reflexive account provides rich descriptions and discussions of the linguistic processes at work in a previously underexplored research environment. In doing so, it reveals fresh insights into the changes taking place in urban British English, and into the difficulties of undertaking ethnographic, sociolinguistic research in a challenging context using a combination of methods and approaches. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to students and scholars from across the fields of sociolinguistics, ethnography, and education; as well as providing a valuable resource for teachers and trainees.

Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: The research context.
Chapter 3: Our roles and identities.
Chapter 4: Methods.Drummonds writing will be accessible to a wide range of readers, including students and those with no background in sociolinguistic research. & Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity offers a thoughtful, reflective, and unusually honest account of doing fieldwork in a challenging context. It is engaging, highly readable, and will certainly be of use to anyone considering linguistic ethnography  of any type  in the future. (Lucy Jones, Journal of Linguistics, June 14, 2019)